Focus June 2025
A downloadable version of this newsletter is available below.
On Monday 30 June, our Scheme Actuary Hymans Robertson will be hosting a webinar to help LGPS academies make sense of their upcoming LGPS accounting disclosures on 31 August 2025.
Designed specifically for academies in the LGPS, the session will cover:
The differences between your LGPS funding and FRS102 accounting valuations.
How your accounting figures are determined.
What’s changed in the accounting environment since 31 August 2024.
Why you might have to restrict your balance sheet position because of an 'asset ceiling'.
If you wish to register, please click the link below:
The webinar will take place online between 3:30pm and 4:15pm. It is suitable for staff with responsibilities for finance, HR, and operations. Please share with any of your colleagues who would be interested in attending.
Don't worry if you can't join live, sign up anyway and you'll be able to access the webinar on-demand, at a time convenient to you.
In the May 2025 edition of the newsletter, we notified you that Staffordshire Pension Fund will be working with Affinity Connect – who are one of the UK’s largest providers of retirement and redundancy services to the public sector – to offer pre-retirement courses for Scheme members.
Further information can be found on our website, including the booking link
We would very much appreciate your assistance in promoting the pre-retirement course to your employees (LGPS members). Please find below a link to a QR Code poster which you may wish to place on notice boards, use on intranet sites or simply cascade through your internal email systems.
On 15 May 2025, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) launched a consultation on changes to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) in England and Wales. The proposed changes are intended to improve fairness in and access to the LGPS. The proposals include:
Survivor benefits and death grants
- Equalising survivor benefits.
- Removing the age 75 limit for death grant eligibility.
- Removing the requirement for a death grant to be paid to the personal Representatives where it is not paid within the two-year period.
- Removing the requirement to nominate a cohabiting partner in the 2008 Scheme.
Gender pensions gap benefits
- Making authorised absences of less than 31 days automatically pensionable.
- Aligning the cost of buying back lost pension for authorised absences of over 30 Days with the standard member contribution rates.
- Extending the time limit for electing to buy back lost pension from 30 days to 12 months.
- Removing the limit that provides employers must only share the cost of buying back lost pension for a maximum period of three years.
- Updating the definition of child-related leave to include all periods of additional maternity, adoption and shared parental leave without pay.
Gender pensions gap reporting
- Making gender pensions gap reporting mandatory for administering authorities with effect from the 2025 valuation.
- The actuarial report and the annual report of that year must include the required information.
- Employers with more than 100 employees will also be required to report gender pensions gap (reported in the rates and adjustments certificate).
Opt outs
- Making reporting the rate of opt outs mandatory for administering authorities.
- Rreports must be included in the annual report each year.
- Collection of additional opt-out data by MHCLG e.g. ethnicity, religion, marital status, hours, salary etc.
- There will be a mandated opt out form.
Forfeiture
- Removing the requirement that a member must have left employment because of the offence for forfeiture to be possible.
- Abolishing the three-month time limit for an application to be made.
- Removing regulation 92 (interim payments directions).
- Publishing guidance on making a forfeiture application.
McCloud remedy
Correcting regulations to provide the McCloud remedy works as expected in relation to:
- Recalculating pension debits.
- Deaths on 30 September 2023.
- Transfers from other public service pension schemes where the member is over age 65.
- Interest on Club transfers.
- Interest on part 4 tax losses.
Abolition of Lifetime Allowance (LTA) changes
- Revoking regulation 50 (limit on total amount of benefits) and withdrawing LTA actuarial guidance.
- Amending the definition of a benefit crystallisation event (BCE).
- Updating actuarial guidance on cash commutation to include the payment of pension commencement excess lump sum (PCELS).
- Legislating for the maximum PCELS to be 25% of the capital value of the benefits being crystallised (subject to contracting out limits).
Other changes
- Allowing small pot payments to be made to members who left the LGPS before 1 April 2008.
- Allowing deferred members who left before 1 April 2008 to buy additional pension with in-house Additional Voluntary Contribution (AVC) pots.
- Allowing for the payment of refunds beyond the 5-year limit.
- other miscellaneous changes.
Some of the changes relating to the gender pensions gap will have an impact on payroll. The Government is welcoming responses from administering authorities, employers, payroll providers and pension software providers. Staffordshire Pension Fund will be preparing a response to the consultation. However, if you wish to submit your own response, you can do so before the consultation closes on 7 August 2025.
You can view the consultation documents on the Scheme consultations page
Along with all the Fund’s participating Scheme employers, you are invited to our Fund’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Tuesday 11 November 2025, commencing at 14.00 and concluding around 16.30. This meeting will be held on Microsoft Teams.
As well as an update on the administration and investment of the Fund, the agenda will provide time for the Fund Actuary to speak to you about the challenges facing the LGPS and the wider pensions industry that may impact you or your organisation.
We would be delighted for as many representatives as possible from the Fund’s participating Scheme employers to join the meeting, so please forward this information to anyone else that you think might be interested.
Please find below link to the registration form to confirm your attendance:
The Scheme Advisory Board (SAB) have published their twelfth Scheme Annual Report for the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) in England and Wales. This report aggregates information supplied in the 86 fund annual reports, as of 31 March 2024 for the reporting year 2023/2024.
The LGPS is one of the largest defined benefit (DB) schemes in the world and is the largest DB scheme in England and Wales, with 15,049 active employers, 6.7m members and assets of £390bn.
Some of the key LGPS highlights for 2023-2024 include:
- Total membership of the LGPS increased, growing by 189,042 (2.8 per cent) to 6.68m members in 2023-2024 from 6.49m in 2022-2023.
- Over 2m pensioners were paid during the year.
- The total assets of the LGPS increased to £390bn, an increase of 10.1 per cent from £354bn.
- These assets were mainly invested in public equities (49 per cent), bonds (16 per cent), property (7 per cent), infrastructure and private equity (both 6% respectively).
- Investment in bonds was significantly increased over the previous year (up from 12%) reflecting a significant improvement in yields.
- The LGPS return on investment over 2023-2024 was 8.9 per cent. This compares very favourably to UK CPI year on year inflation of 2.5 per cent (Sept – Sept).
- The scheme maintained a positive cash-flow position overall, when including investment income.
- While it has taken some time for death rates in the UK population to return to ‘typical’ levels following the pandemic, Club Vita’s data driven insights indicate that LGPS pensioners have generally shown greater resilience and that life expectancies of LGPS pensioners are returning to pre-pandemic levels.
- Total investment management costs increased by £49.6m (2.9 per cent). Management fees increased by £52m, transaction costs increased by £20m while performance fees decreased by £15m and other [investment] costs decreased by £6m.
- Total administration and governance costs increased by 5.7 per cent (£15.7 million) to £290.8 million in 2023-2024 from £275.1 million in 2022-2023. This was primarily due to an increase of £19m in administration costs.
We would be grateful if you could continue to circulate this newsletter to appropriate colleagues in your organisation for example, Human Resources, Payroll and Finance Department or alternatively provide us with their email address, so we can add them to our distribution list.
If you require any further information or clarification, please do not hesitate to contact the Pensions Communications Team on pensions.comms@staffordshire.gov.uk